Thursday, February 28, 2013

Dems to US Jews: If you don't stick up for yourself, we won't either

There is no sugar-coating the point. The Senate
has just confirmed the most truculent cabinet officer in respect of
Israel in more than a generation because important institutions and
leaders shrank from making an issue of it.

This is a story that is painful for many people to talk about. It
would be inaccurate to suggest that the only objection to putting Mr.
Hagel in at the war department had to do with Israel. He would be
inadequate, even were Israel not an issue. There is a broad sense within
the Jewish community — as there is among a number of non-Jewish
senators who permitted his nomination to go to the floor — that Mr.
Hagel has proven himself incompetent and disingenuous.

Yet there’s no gainsaying the special concern that his hostility to
Israel has raised among the Jewish leadership. And one of the stories
that is being spoken of in private is how humiliated the leaders of the
Jewish community feel. Nearly all of them — not all, but nearly all —
were opposed to the elevation of Mr. Hagel to the Pentagon. But only one
of the Jewish defense agencies spoke out forcefully against him.

That was the Zionist Organization of America, which is the oldest
pro-Israel organization in America, having been founded in 1897, the
same year in which Theodor Herzl convened at Basel, Switzerland, the
First Zionist Congress. It opposed the Hagel nomination early,
forthrightly, and unapologetically. The result, according to the ZOA’s
president, Morton Klein, is that it received objections from several
leaders worried about the consequences for the Jewish community of such a
public position.

Mr. Klein believes the Hagel nomination would not have been confirmed
had the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation
League, and the American Jewish Committee taken a formal public position
against Mr. Hagel. All three agencies have had many heroic moments. But
they stood down on Mr. Hagel. Said Mr. Klein: “Several senators — and
important ones — said to me: ‘If Aipac, ADL and AJCommittee — especially
Aipac — had come out and lobbied against Hagel, he would have been
stopped.”

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About Me

I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 12 to 33 years and eight grandchildren. Three of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com